Round 2: 3430BC - 2290BC
Eventful round for such a young game.
First, I decided to get Fishing first. Noting how a difference of 1 commerce could shave a turn off AH, I decided the 9 turns to get Fishing might be worth the turns the lakes' 2G each might shave off our research for a long time.
Anyway, our second warrior met another neighbour:
If it isn't Sister Isabelle.
The hills are alive...
Nevermind.
The same warrior came up to her borders:
She isn't very far. Good news for us, bad news for her
Notice that Buddhism was founded. Guess who founded it?
Once Fishing was researched, I went to the city screen and fiddled with the tiles:
Indeed, working the lake and the silk forest allowed us to research Mining in 9 turns instead of 11. And, in this case, without increasing the worker's build time too! Looking good.
Meanwhile, our other exploring warrior also earned Woodsman I:
I'm glad we built a warrior before the worker. They can do a lot of exploring in different directions before dying.
The worker was soon complete.
I decided to grow the city while continuing the faster research. Not working the silk forest didn't increase the number of turns left for Mining. The worker went to farm the corn first. Once that was done,
Our city would grow in no time. Once that was achieved, it would be able to build the next warrior quickly. This warrior is to escort the settler later. Doing it as I planned,
I fortified the completed warrior in Thebes. We have enough explorers. I didn't want to risk this one dying.
By the way, once our worker had finished with the farm, I asked him to build a road on the same tile. I know we should get the pasture up next, but the worker would waste 2 turns just getting there. I thought building a road there would benefit us in the longer run since the city would act like a roaded tile once the road was up, saving us a turn now and a turn or two later (and we will have to road the corn eventually).
Thebes went on to start on a settler, who will settle the pigs/silk/sugar site to the west:
The worker went to pasture the horses next:
As the screenshot shows, the pasture enabled us to significantly increase our production as we could work the pasture and the silk forest, which gave us 6H on top of 2F2G like the lake. There was no significant sacrifice in research, but with the highest commerce around, the lake(s) will probably feature in our tile management again later.
Anyway, the warrior exploring towards NW soon ran into Inca territory:
Do you see what I saw? The perfect opportunity to steal a worker from Huayna. With a warrior that would get +70% defense from the forest too
[to be continued in the next post]